Nikolai er i færd med at montere en elmotor på sin ladcykel i HAL9k. Der er lidt der skal mases og bukkes lidt for at det kan lykkedes, men gåpåmodet er der cyklen venter med stor forventning på at blive gjort højteknologisk.
This could happen to you: A really cool LED lamp was found online, on a Danish and well-written homepage. Unfortunately, when the lamp arrives it is a cheap Chinese production, of questionable quality and safety. This is a non-rational quest to make such a cheap LED lamp safe to use.
From the outset the wires are tiny. The wires are connected with wire nuts *gasp*! (Wire nuts are basically unheard of in Europe). The LED driver itself that converts the 230V AC into DC has absolutely no separation, and as we will see later, absolutely no safety features. It did have a cool feature of changing light color temperature by turning the lamp on and off a couple of times, though.
Short-circuited 300mAUnloaded 118V.Sparky!
But happily going to 300mA when shorted, going up to 118V unloaded, and full willingness to spark away, is a deal-breaker. This abomination was not being powered on in this house! It should be possible to replace the unsafe parts with safer (and more expensive) parts.
The first step was understanding the mess of wires. This took quite some pondering to figure out that all the LEDs were basically in series, and that it was wired with a “common positive”, with either the white or the black wire (or both) acting as ground depending on the wanted color temperature.
In the end the entire schematic was reverse engineered.
That LED driver was going nowhere but the electronic garbage bin, so a replacement of decent quality had to be acquired: a constant-current LED driver (configurable from 200mA–350mA) was purchased from a reputable source. That gave the next problem: an LED driver of quality was at least double the size of the unsafe one, and did not fit in the original round enclosure. 3D-printing to the rescue, and a new bigger round enclosure was printed.
Now everything should be able to fit and work! Instead of that illogical wiring of putting the LEDs in series, why not just put the two parts in parallel? Well, that won’t work. Only the path of least-resistance would light up, in this case the dome LEDs. So, back to the original wiring in series.
Unfortunately, the next problem was that the new LED driver was unwilling to drive LEDs as originally wired, that seemed to require somewhere above 45V, out of spec for the new driver. More stuff had to change. Looking at the schematic, the long strip in the circle could be cut in half, and the two half put in parallel instead. This should reduce the power going to those LEDs, and thus also the light output, but should also help to decrease the required voltage. But first I had to learn again the hard way that putting LEDs in parallel they need to match quite closely: the original LED strip had 11 segments, and dividing into 6 and 5 gave lights only in the one part.
Reducing to 5 and 5 segments worked really well!
Finally, the total voltage of putting the two parts of the lamp in series was below what the new LED driver would supply.
The only task remaining was to fit everything back into the enclosure, and add copious amounts of Kapton tape and hot glue. And finally, the spaceman could go star-fishing – safely.
For en forbruger i Danmark er strømprisen en sum af forskellige priser og afgifter, nogle faste, nogle dynamiske:
El-afgiften fastsat ved lov til 0,761 kr per kWh.
Energinet’s eltariffer: Nettarif på 0,074 kr per kWh (år 2024), og systemtarif på 0,051 kr per kWh (år 2024).
Netselskabstarif fra forsyningsselskabet (N1, Radius, etc.): denne varierer per time og per sæson for at forsøge at incentivere til at udligne forbruget så der ikke skal investeres i nye og større elkabler, og er indkodet i datasættet over tariffer og priser. Private forbrugere betaler C-tarif.
Spot-prisen: er den anden variable, og denne varierer ud fra udbud og efterspørgsel.
Moms: 25% lagt til summen af ovenstående
Dette er alle de uundgåelige priser og afgifter, der kan regnes ud udelukkende fra adressen. Derudover kommer så det “frie elmarked”, hvor der skal betales til et elselskab: typisk månedsabonnement og et tillæg til spot-prisen.
Tariffer og priser – det værste åbne datasæt?
Som om det ikke er uoverskueligt nok i sig selv, bliver vi nødt til at snakke om datasættet Datahub Price List. Der er flere åbenlyse problemer med det:
Der er flere felter man burde filtrere efter, men hvor der ikke findes en udtømmende liste over værdier, f.x. netselskab “ChargeOwner”. Det bedste man kan gøre er at downloade, hvor man så løber ind i at download kun giver 100.000 rækker – og datasættet er fuldt på over 300.000 rækker.
ChargeTypeCode er per selskab – og uden systematik. Så for hvert enkelt selskab skal man finde ud af hvilken priskode de bruger for C-tariffen. Og hvad når det ændrer sig?
ValidTo kan være udeladt og dermed et open ended interval, og prisen gælder så indtil data retroaktivt ændres. Det betyder også at man ikke kan filtrere på datoer, da prisen på 1. april kan være en række der har en ValidFrom 1. januar (eller tidligere).
Price1-24: dette er selve timetarif-priserne. Hvis en pris ikke er udfyldt gælder Price1 – hvorfor I alverden dog tilføje den ekstra kompleksitet!?!?!
For ikke at tale om tidszoner: man må antage (det er ikke dokumenteret) at alle datoer og timetal er angivet i hvad end tid der er gældende i Danmark på pågældende dato. Dette giver så problemer ved skift fra sommer-/normal-tid hvor en time gentages eller udelades: hvilken timesats bør bruges i et døgn der har 23 eller 25 timer?
Efter at have regnet de fleste af de ovenstående problemer ud, skrev jeg en API-proxy der udstiller det API man i virkeligheden vil have: givet en dato, og et elselskab (eller en adresse), returnerer den prisen time for time som et JSON dokument. Prisen er typisk tilgængelig fra kl. 13 dagen før. Som bonus får man også CO2 udledningen med, hvis den er tilgængelig (typisk kl. 15 dagen før). Det er implementeret som en ren API proxy, dvs. det er ren omskrivning af input og data og ikke andet.
Det hele er open source, men der kører en version på elprisen.somjson.dk som frit kan benyttes.
Alternativer
Der findes andre API’er der opfylder forskellige use-cases:
Min Strøm API er rigtig modent og har egen forecast model der kan forecaste 7 dage frem, før priserne er låst på Energi Data Service. Kræver en API nøgle og er uden kildekode
Strømligning API kan bruges til at udregne priser baseret på historisk forbrugsdata. Kan dog også bruges til at hente de forecastede priser. Med rate limiting, og uden kildekode.
Carnot har også et åbent API og egen forecast model. Kræver API nøgle, og er uden kildekode.
I had a need for an extra-extra long multi-cutter blade, so we made one in Hal9k. Until proven otherwise, we hereby claim it to be the world’s longest, at about 30 cm from rotation point to the cutting edge.
Converting Starlock-MAX to Starlock-Plus
Initially I thought I could get away with just a 80mm long Bosch MAIZ 32 APB which seems to be the longest commercially available. First problem was that my multi-cutter was only “Starlock-Plus” and this blade is Starlock-MAX. Turns out, you can easily get around that: just drill up the hole to 10mm, and it fits like a glove, at least on the Starlock-Plus Bosch GOP 18V-28.
World record time
But as it turns out, I needed more length, and anything worth doing is worth overkilling! So sacrificing an old worn-out blade by welding on some 2mm steel plate provided a good base that would still attach to the multi-cutter.
First attempt was just attaching the blade with two 2mm screws, as these are the largest that will fit in the star’s spikes and thereby prevent rotation. Initial testing:
So next solution was to beef up with a central 8mm bolt instead.
This worked much better if torqued enough (read: all you possibly can!), test-run went great after the initial oscillations:
And ultimately the cut in the tight corner was made, one-handedly in order to be able to film:
Great success!
This should not be considered safe, and several warranties were probably voided, but it got the job done.
Hal9k er Aalborgs hackerspace. Et åbent højteknologisk værksted, hvor man kan lave (næsten) alt. Udover en masse forskellige værksteder, oser Hal9k af viden, kreativitet og varmt socialt fælleskab.
Alle der kommer i vores lokaler risikerer at lære en masse, og ikke mindst få nogle gode oplevelser.
Der er fast klubaften hver torsdag fra kl. 19 til ud på aftenen, hvor alle er velkomne til at kigge forbi!
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20 feb
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